By Michael Adams
Austin Sports Journal

SMITHVILLE – Smithville is best known as the filming location of the 1998 movie “Hope Floats,” starring Sandra Bullock and Harry Connick Jr.

However, the town’s other claim to fame is Smithville High School Lady Tiger basketball.

On any given Tuesday or Friday evening from December through February, the town gathers at Smithville High School’s Tiger Gymnasium to cheer on the girls’ basketball team. Most of the time, it’s standing room only and comparable to football stadiums on Friday nights in the fall across Texas.

Tuesday was no different as a packed house watched the Lady Tigers defeat Bellville 33-25, claiming the program’s first district championship since 2019 and the second under the guidance of one of the most decorated players in Smithville girls’ basketball history – head coach Jaimie Kadlecek.

Kadlecek played at Smithville from 2007 to 2011 for legendary head coach Robin Ramsey, who retired in 2013 after coaching the Lady Tigers to their second appearance in the Class 3A state tournament.

“Coach Ramsey was very passionate about the game,” Kadlecek said. “She did love us. She had very high expectations for us, which is why her teams were so successful. That’s what I’m trying to feed back into this group of players, and they buy in and meet me where I’m at.”

A return home

This is Kadlecek’s second stint as head coach of the team she once played for. She took over for Scotty Stephens in 2018 and remained head coach until 2022 when she resigned.

First-year athletic director Layne Neumann asked Kadlecek to return as head coach once he arrived in Smithville last spring.

In her first season back, she coached the Lady Tigers to their best record since her first year in 2018 and produced the second-winningest team since the 2013 season.

Junior point guard Sydnie Brenner, who wears Kadlecek’s No. 12, is the quiet leader for the Lady Tigers. She said the atmosphere is much different this season after going 14-14 last year.

“Coach Kadlecek was the missing piece to the puzzle,” Brenner said. “She gave us everything we needed to be successful. I mean, we weren’t really good last year, and we have the same players as we did last year, so that shows she was the missing piece.”

Brenner moved to Smithville last year after playing her freshman season at Edinburg. It was by chance that she got Kadlecek’s No. 12, but said she wants to represent the number the way Kadlecek did when she played for the Lady Tigers.

“I was number 22 my freshman year at Edinburg, which honored my grandma, who recently passed away,” she said. “When I came here that number wasn’t available, so I didn’t really know to pick her number. … I know she’s a big part of Smithville and it means a lot to me.”

When asked what she felt seeing her coach’s name on a banner representing the 2011 team that reached the regional semifinals, Brenner said, “pride.”

“I was told right away about the tradition of Smithville girls’ basketball,” she said. “You see all the banners in the gym and walk down the hallway and see all the photos and posters, you know there’s a lot to live up to.”

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Ramsey’s influence

Kadlecek said one of her goals as a coach is to build the winning culture back into Smithville girls’ basketball. That starts with Ramsey’s influence on her as a player along with her time playing at St. Edward’s University in Austin.

“A lot of what I do is from coach Ramsey,” she said. “I will say, whenever I was at St. Edward’s, the coach there was very similar to coach Ramsey, from building the culture around relationships and also getting them to buy into it’s not just about what happens on the court… One thing coach Ramsey taught us was that you don’t have to be best friends, but when you’re on the court, it needs to look like it, because your team is your family and you’re going to war together.”

When Smithville was beating Navasota in a home game on Jan. 31 and up by 17 points, Kadlecek called a timeout with 30 seconds left in the game.

“With this program, there’s so much tradition behind it, so it’s very easy to have high expectations for the kids, but there’s very little visual for them to look at. Sure, my name’s up there on a banner, and they see that, but do they really understand,” she said.

“So, in that timeout, the fans are loud and cheering, I looked at them and said, ‘I want you to take this moment in, because this is what it’s like to be a Lady Tiger.’ They looked up in the stands and they weren’t used to that.”

Returning to prominence

Kadlecek never won a district championship as a player. However, the Lady Tigers made the playoffs all four years of her high school career, which was part of a 21-year playoff streak that ended in 2015. It was the longest active playoff streak in the state at the time.

Smithville missed the playoffs again in 2018 before Kadlecek returned for the 2018-19 season as head coach and led the team to a 24-12 overall record and 10-0 district record in her first year.

While success for girls’ basketball is a standard at Smithville, Kadlecek said she doesn’t feel pressure.

“I know that no matter what I’m doing, it’s right for the program,” she said. “Success always comes, and that’s how it’s always been. I’ve always trusted the process with that.”

The Lady Tigers are building a new playoff tradition and will play Brookshire Royal on Tuesday in a Class 4A Division II bi-district playoff at Caldwell High School. Tipoff is slated for 7 p.m. It’s Smithville’s seventh consecutive appearance in the postseason.